IDC: 250,000 Windows Phones already sold in Russia, to overtake iPhone this quarter

It seems Windows Phone in Russia is turning into a roaring success.According to IDC more than 250,000 Windows Phones have beensold in Russia since phones supporting the language were releasedin September 2011, taking 3% market share in 2011.

The performance has in fact been so encouraging that they expectWindows Phone to take 14% market share in 2012, ahead of iPhone,which is expected to only take 9% of the market.

Said Simon Baker, analyst at the IDC:

Today’s sales results of a new mobile platform from Microsoft allowsone to predict that in the first quarter of 2012 Windows Phone is likelyto be able to surpass the number of iOS smartphones sold in RussiaIn a press release Microsoft notes retailers selling Windows Phoneswere very pleased with the results, saying they surpassed expectations,and that Windows Phone was off to a stronger start than Android atthe same stage in 2009.

Buyers were also very satisfied with their handsets, with 98% are satisfiedand 94% willing to recommend it to friends.

They also note women for 59% of buyers, nothing this is sign of anothersuccess – creating a phone that focussed on functionality rather thanspecs and which was easy to use out of the box.

At the end of the year it's possible, but i doubt it will overtake iPhone this quarter.

MS still has a lot to do with localization.

iPhone gained just 8% because it's oriented on rich people. Unlike in US where you pay $199 once then paying off 2 year as contract, here it cost $1200+, 1,5+ times more expensive than SGSII, which is most popular Android device.

At the end of the year it's possible, but i doubt it will overtake iPhone this quarter.

MS still has a lot to do with localization.

iPhone gained just 8% because it's oriented on rich people. Unlike in US where you pay $199 once then paying off 2 year as contract, here it cost $1200+, 1,5+ times more expensive than SGSII, which is most popular Android device.

I was just about to say something along those lines. It will be down to the price, and as you've said, its a LOT more expensive than Android and WP handsets.

At the end of the year it's possible, but i doubt it will overtake iPhone this quarter.

MS still has a lot to do with localization.

iPhone gained just 8% because it's oriented on rich people. Unlike in US where you pay $199 once then paying off 2 year as contract, here it cost $1200+, 1,5+ times more expensive than SGSII, which is most popular Android device.

Holy crap I actually thought you were exaggerating when you said $1,200, but you weren't

Once MS gets more enterprise oriented with their Windows Phones and polishes Skydrive a bit more, they are going to be very tough.

Nobody cares of Skydrive and Bing in Russia. That's why MS had to partner with Yandex, so Yandex is default search engine on Windows Phone and for some WP services in Russia. And one of reasons why MS acquired Skype. It's very large competition on IM market where Skype is on same level with Mail.Ru (MRA, ICQ), QIP, Yandex, Google and many other IM services. I would say it's second after ICQ. While WLM, which is monopolist on west has ~0% on Russian IM market.

So, people more likely care of ability to use USB without any dances, good browsers, proper pricing policy in marketplace (like Steam has independent prices for different parts of the world, not a single price) and some of popular programs that are not released for WP. 2GIS, Wizee, Opera, free YouTube app - that is what at least does not exist for WP. ICQ was just released few days ago. That was highly important because people prefer to use IMs rather than SMS.But Yandex, QIWI, Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, Kinopoisk and some other popular apps and services already released their apps just in less than half a year. Android had to wait over a year for most of them.

But still there are a lot things to do and I hope they won't fail with Windows 8 as well, though at the moment doesn't look that nice (localization i mean).